I've been gathering a lot of "blind purchase" doo-dads and similar items since finding the stores Kid Robot and Kimono My House out here. (NYC's Tokyo Pop also carries a lot of this stuff, but I didn't discover it really until after I left town. There's also a New York Kid Robot I've never been to.) The Japanese fanboy market toys and the urban art collectibles are two different realms, really. These guys here, mostly from the latter category, they're just the ones I'm currently displaying at my house.
The fish and the genie guy are both from the Neo-Kaiju series, and they're not blind purchases. The fuzzy black Kubrick bear is a blind purchase with a ton of whack variations. 
The shaggy-looking green guy is the same guy on the shirt everyone's standing on; he comes with the axe and the little skull. He can't hold the axe and the axe blade doesn't fit in the notch cut into the skull's top -- which is too bad since that's exactly why it was cut there. I guess even the uber-hip toys still invite disappointment. The quadrupeds on the right are two of the second series of Imperial Newts by nutball graphic artist Jim Woodring. The second series of Newts was way better than the first one. The two bear-controlled bears are those things I snagged at Giant Robot the day JPX and I met on Haight street. 
And lastly, the sole representative of the Kimono My House contingent, the Species 8472 Bio-Ship from Star Trek: Voyager. By Furuta. Not Futura...Furuta. Classy, no?
4 comments:
Those things are super freaky! It's like a scarier version of Where the Wild Things Are. My problem with this category of toys is the whole "blind-purchase" thing. From what I could tell when I was in the store, these would be too pricey for me to risk purchasing duplicates. Remember the days of trying to complete a set of Star Wars cards when you only needed 1 or 2 cards? You'd buy like 6 packs hoping to get those cards. It wasn't so unreasonable because the cards were pretty cheap back then. It I collected the blind purchase stuff I'd probably do so on Ebay or some other place where I could see what I was buying. Do you run into a lot of dupes?
Yes, indeed. The only blind purchases in that picture are the bear-controlled bears, the black Kubrik bear and the Star Trek ship, except I did it just how you suggested and bought the ST ships off ebay in a big lot, the whole series at a time. Those Trek ships were 6 or 8 bucks each, so it was kind of impossible to do it any other way. After opening two I realized "okay, no way I'm dropping 8 dollars on a dupe here."
I haven't even pictured any of the Chocolasaurus dinosaurs (yet). They're only 3 bucks a pop and each series is two dozen critters, but once you only need a few it gets pretty frustrating.
Adam and Jeannette like to get a bunch of blind purchase figs (in the same theme) as favors for their kids' birthday parties. That's great, because after the kids have got their goodies there's usually a few leftovers to open and choose from. As you can imagine, that's pretty damn fun.
What happens if one of the kids at the party opens up a chase figure, do you try to cheat them out of it like you cheated me out of those Star Wars cards all those years ago?
Oh, nice. I was all set to take the bait and blast through your lies...but really, we're the only people reading this, and you know in your heart who got the raw end of that deal.
Two people in an elevator, one guy farts. Everybody knows who did it.
Post a Comment